Stolen
by Bad Mum
Summary: She knows as soon as their letters arrive, that they will not be together. Padma Patil and separation. For the Second Competition That Must Not Be Named at the HPFC Forum.


**Stolen**

She knows as soon as their letters arrive, that they will not be together. Her twin laughs at her fears, tells her she is mistaken, but she knows. She has always known things that her twin did not.

"Ravenclaw!" is no surprise to her, the Hat resting on her smooth black hair for just a second before calling its decision. Of course Ravenclaw. Where else would she go?

And then it is her sister's turn, and the stricken look on her face as she stumbles to the Gryffindor table makes her heart hurt. She had tried to warn her.

"Your House will be your family," the tall stern witch had said before the Sorting, and she had not realised the reality of that until she faced it every day. Her blood family, her sister from whom she had not been separated for more than an hour before, has been stolen from her and replaced by noisy strangers who laugh and clamour and talk and do not understand what she is missing.

They see each other when they can, snatched moments in the Great Hall or the Library, accidental-on-purpose meetings in the corridors between lessons. It is like carrying on a clandestine love affair, and it is not enough. She forgets to eat, she goes from day to day barely talking to anyone, her skin and hair lose their lustre, and her eyes no longer sparkle with life.

And in that other tower, her twin is building a life of her own, a life without her. And making a friend.

The first time it happens, when she walks past her unseeing, laughing at something the pretty girl with the long blonde hair has said, she thinks it is a mistake and that she will realise and turn back to her. But it does not happen. Her sister gives her a smiling glance over her shoulder, lifts a hand in greeting, and carries on down the long corridor to the Charms classroom without stopping and without halting her breathless conversation with the other girl.

That sets the pattern. Their moments together become fewer, her sister's hugs are brief and perfunctory. She knows when they speak that more than half her sister's mind is elsewhere, with the other girl, the pretty girl who laughs and chatters and has stolen her heart.

She could hate her, but she does not even know her.

She learns to live with it, even makes her own friends, although none of them are close. She begins to eat properly again, she sleeps deeply at night in the blue-hung bed between two of her new almost-friends. She laughs and talks and studies in the common room with the others. Her hair and eyes shine and her complexion is smooth and flawless. There is no longer any outward sign that she is missing a part of herself. She works hard at her lessons, and her father smiles at her marks whilst he frowns at her sister's. She even becomes a prefect when her sister does not, and her father smiles again and gives her one of his rare hugs.

She lives for the holidays. In the holidays it is as it has always been, except that her twin looks out so eagerly for the owls from her friend, and laughs at her when she tries to articulate what is missing between them. She clings to the hope that one day their closeness will be restored, that they will be again a matched pair, identical but for the colour of their saris, for the gossiping aunts and giggling cousins to envy. But it never happens.

And then the war comes, and she is frightened. She is not the Gryffindor after all. But, for once her sister seeks her out, insistent that she should learn to fight with the rest of them, and she follows her to the Hog's Head and to the meetings of an army she would really rather not be a part of. She is glad when their father takes them home when the headmaster dies, although her sister cries and rages at him, desperate to stay. She wants to go home; she does not want to be part of a war.

The next year she is part of a resistance she had never willingly joined. She fights because she must, because it is the right thing to do, and because her twin is fighting too. But she is always afraid.

The battle passes in a blur. She comes through it miraculously unscathed, and even acquits herself well, but her sister is not so lucky. She finds her afterwards in the Great Hall, cradling her friend's head in her lap and sobbing. She puts her arms around her and holds her as she cries. It is all she can do.

And it is not enough. It can never be enough. Her sister has been stolen from her, and however tightly she holds on now, she can never win her back. It is far too late for that.


End file.
